I’ve never heard of bringing a gift to both the shower AND the wedding.
There is no ‘rule’ about how much a wedding gift should be. The bride and groom are not entitled to “recoup” costs from gifts. Gifts are not an admission charge to a party. The guests should give a gift to congratulate the couple with whatever they feel appropriate–be it cash, cheque, something off their registry, or something else they thought the couple would enjoy.
Showers are technically distinct from the wedding itself–lots of showers are ‘themed,’ like a kitchen shower for kitchen goods, or a lingerie shower for a new bride, or whatever. Lots of people will typically get something off the registry for the shower (since gifts are usually opened at the shower itself), and cash for the wedding itself, but this is by no means a hard-and-fast rule. Typical, though. The shower is usually seen as distinct because it’s thrown by someone else (sister, friend, cousin, strangers, whoever) and thus the bride is not “asking” for gifts by throwing herself a party.
Usually, it’s the job of the maid of honour, best man, or one of the couple’s parents to take charge of the wedding gifts and cards, both to direct people where to leave them and to pack them all up at the end of the evening. Many couples don’t leave for their honeymoons until a few days later, but it’s much easier for someone else to just pack up and bring all the gifts over to their home the day after or whenever, since usually the just-married couple is tired and they have enough on their mind.
/wedding consultant
Around here it’s perfectly okay to bring gifts to the wedding reception and there is usually a table set up for just that purpose. It’s also okay to send them by mail, have the store deliver them (if there still is such a store somewhere), or to bring them by the bride’s residence before the wedding, or the couple’s residence after the wedding/honeymoon.
In my experience this is one of those rules that only works one way- that is, the newlyweds don’t expect a gift that covers the cost of the reception as if it were an admission charge ,but when guests decide on a gift they take into account he cost of the reception as well as closeness to the bride and groom. Of course, both my husband and I belong to ethnic groups where there really is no such thing as a “gift chosen specifically for the couple as something they’d enjoy” (it’s either cash or gold jewelry) so that might make a difference.
If you are invited to the shower and you choose to attend, you bring a shower gift. Usually that is a gift, not cash or a check. The gifts are opened at the event, and hopefully there are some ‘personal’ gifts for the bride to provide some entertainment. This is especially important if the hostess invited 50+ guests and the opening of the gifts lasts for hours. There are only so many electric can openers and crock pots you can ohh and ahh over.
If you are invited to the wedding you give a wedding gift, usually cash or a check but it doesn’t have to be. You can send the gift before the wedding, after the wedding, or bring it to the wedding. Usually there is a table set up to pile everything on. I have never seen gifts opened at a wedding. Somebody will load them all up and hold them until the bride and groom return from their honeymoon. I suspect most couples take the envelopes with them.
I’ve always thought of shower gifts as separate from wedding gifts. The last wedding I went to, the maid of honor held a shower with the theme “domestic goddess” and there was a separate registry as well. The shower gifts were all small.
Seconding this. I have never been to a reception that didn’t include a table for wedding gifts. Even when my extremely wealthy uncle-in-law got married, they had a table for wedding gifts. We had very little money, so we brought a pretty jar full of jelly bellies, because who doesn’t like candy? I would have been pretty psyched about jelly bellies on my wedding day.
I think the BBB gift certificate is a great idea, because the gifts we have come to appreciate the most are the household wares that have endured for years. Now I always give household stuff for weddings because it made such a huge difference for us starting out in life.
Don’t all couples really just want cash?
No. A lot of couples really want to “upgrade” their home stuff. If they’ve been living together for a while but they still have crappy dishes and pots and pans, they might really really be hoping that someone gets them a set of decent cutting boards and knives or a place setting that’s not from Kmart or a good-quality mixer or whatever.
Sometimes, but I think it’s considered really really tacky to ask for cash in the US (it still seems like that to me) and the “we’d rather have cash” concept usually seems to be communicated by not setting up a registry.
These days I give cash 95% of the time and buy off the registry 5% of the time. I’m in my 30s and my fellow 30 something brides are usually professionals shacked up with other professionals. As I always understood it, $100-$150 is the amount people should generally spend on the wedding. I know you can give one of the small gifts for the shower, but I avoid those functions like the plague and stick to only attending the main wedding event.
For my upcoming wedding I set up registries because while giving cash is common in my culture, my American friends kept asking about it and I don’t want my parents giving them the message like “write them a check if you want.” I feel like there would be some pearl clutching over that so I stuck a registry tab on our wedding website.
I’m not expecting anything from my guests at my wedding. But because it’s an Indian wedding they’ll come, guzzle at the open bar, eat like crazy, criticize everything, call me a whore, tell my fiance he could have done better and go home sated. 
As an aside: I am looking forward to our wedding but also completely sure they are unnecessarily ridiculous.
beagle head tilt
$100-150 for … umm … immediate family members? Extremely close friend that gave you one of their kidneys?
I don’t remember where I read that generally a $100 is the standard gift for the couple-it might be a perceived cultural norm for the weddings I’ve attended. But I usually gave about $100 as a standard gift and then $150 for close friends (usually b/c I am avoiding things like showers etc.).
This is going to depend on where you live, your background, etc. But here, I would say $100 per person is standard for an average wedding (this is speaking from a working class, immigrant background.) For good friends, I give $150 per person. For immediate family, well, my gift was several times that, but I only have one sibling.
It doesn’t matter if you don’t eat anything. They still have to pay for you to be there.
Checks are a lot easier to transport than dozens of waffle irons and espresso machines.
No, but the reality is weddings cost a lot of money (on average $25 k). It’s nice to show some token of appreciation that you aren’t just there to scarf down as much free food and alchohol as you can.
That’s not really a lot of money.
May I tack on a related question?
Why are such events called showers? Baby showers, wedding showers.
Is it to signify that gifts are falling over the person?
I agree, and I set that standard as a single person in the mid-2000s when most of my friends were getting married. I suspect in NYC where I live now, average is $150 to $200, and even more if you’re going as two people. I guess I’ll find out soon because I have to go to a wedding in Princeton in December (not New York, but since the bride is from NY, her expectations will be in line with NY pricing I’m sure).
I will absolutely not predicate my gift on the amount of money you spend to put on the party. You get a gift appropriately sized for our relationship and my current financial situation, doesn’t matter if you are doing a backyard reception or renting the Waldorf Astoria.
I agree. My wedding was tiny so we didn’t get many gifts period, but we threw pretty big Bar and Bat Mitzvahs for the kids. Our guests were guests. We were not in anyway trying to recoup money or judged people by their gift.
Give a big gift, give a token amount but whatever you do, give it with love and good wishes. That’s all that matters.
Yes, that is exactly why.
It seems to be regional. In my area, or at least among my friends, you’d bring a small gift to the shower (a mixing bowl, a set of spatulas and an apron) and send a gift either before or after the wedding, but show up at the wedding empty-handed, because if you bring gifts to the reception, the couple has to deal with a big pile of stuff when they should be getting themselves to the airport. There often is a table and a basket for people who do insist on doing this, but they’re looked on as eccentrics. I think I got two gifts at my actual wedding. Everything else came before, and one or two after.
While I agree with you, this does make me a little uncomfortable. Like Cheesesteak says, the gift really shouldn’t be based on how much you spend on the party, and I don’t like the idea of “expectations” when it comes to a gift. We got married last year and I honestly couldn’t tell you who gave how much, although the average non-family (cash) gift ran about $100-$150.